Nokia Lumia 610 unboxing and hands on video

Although we're not expecting too much more in terms of new Windows Phones for the next few months, Nokia is just getting the Lumia 610 into people's hands in various countries or unlocked for those who want it.

The Lumia 610 is Nokia's device for emerging markets and thus features lower specs than most users are accustomed to, in turn they are able to keep the price down, hovering below $300 contract-free.

We just had ours show up on our doorstep so we figured we would give you a quick tour. While plastic throughout the device comes in four colors including black, cyan, magenta and white, giving it quite a nice appeal. Truth be told, while it lacks the ClearBlack screen (but it does have Gorilla Glass), it's a nimble little guy and quite impressive for those who can spring for the higher-end Lumias.

Featuring a 3.7" screen, 256MB of RAM (ala "Tango"), a 5MP camera and 8GB of storage (5.59 GB available), the 610 is not particularly mind-blowing, especially with its Qualcomm Snapdragon S1 7227A 800MHz CPU, which just gets it by in terms of performance.

The bigger story of course is that this phone allows Nokia to push down into the rapidly expanding emerging markets of the world, someplace where Apple can't go but Android has with a vengeance (the quality also drops rapidly on the latter on such low-end hardware). Will the 610 be successful? All in all, it's so far not a bad experience and we imagine for many, this will be a solid Windows Phone introduction.

We'll have more over the next week on this device, so pay attention to Windows Phone Central.

I got my hands on the Lumia 610 yesterday, as I needed a temporary replacement for my HTC 7 Mozart which had to go in for repairs already the second time. As the Lumia 900 is not available here yet (due to heavy demand on the US market), I had to decice for a cheap inbetweener.
According to the guy at the mobilezone shop I was the first to buy one, as they only had received them in earlier in the morning. I had to tell the guy off tho: He asked me if I was interested in a Lumia 800 or 710, both phones with Windows Mobile! Grrrrr!!! Told him I never ever wanted to hear that from him again, insisted that he had to tell me how that OS was really called. (this kind of being uninformed/not interested drives me nuts).

Anyways, I got mine now, and I am actually surprised how snappy it reacts. Of course I have to live with some apps not working on Tango (Skype, Tango video app, Windguru, ... i'm a WP7 .. .. just to name a few)
Really impressed with the Nokia collection that comes with it, even for that low price (I paid CHF 299.-, but there is an online shop selling it for CHF 259.- .. all without contract). Nokia Drive, Nokia Maps, Nokia Music all really cool.
I can live with being called a developing nation @inteller ....

Can anyone explain to me why a sain person would buy this and not the 710? The 710 costs exactly the same as the 710 here in Belgium (€ 250)? What's Nokia thinking? I thought that the 610 should be a sub €200 phone so that WP can better compete with android on the lower end....

Nice phone, but 720 hours 3G standby time???? C'mon!!! Who the f*ck made up these specs? Surely every smartphone n00b knows that that is complete and utter bullshit. Why do OEM's keep putting these specs up? My HTC HD7 has a 3G standby time of 27 hours when in the official HTC specs it says 320 hours!!! I still can't believe how company's can put these numbers up, they must think we are all idiots...